Introducing The Builder Diaries
What’s it like, building something.
I’ve been building products for about 3 years now.
Usually, it’s been around building a product as a startup — or for a startup. But in the last few months, I’ve been enamored of building stuff for its own sake. Just because I can. Just because I feel like it. And it can be anything. An app. A small-ish web app. A mobile web site. Maybe an open source library. And after getting onto the awesomeness that’s Product Hunt, well — it’s infectious.
At the same time, I’ve been drawn towards write-ups that walk you through, say, a mobile app’s mockups. Or maybe how some maker worked his/her way through growth/retention for their product. I think that not only shares a lot of expertise, it’s also a great way to check out possible things one can do, possible methods one can try out — or even critique, and come up with a better way to code stuff, or design mockups, or hack retention and engagement.
Ergo, I thought, why not bring it all together? And violà! Let’s create a platform where I can document how I build stuff.
That’s what The Builder Diaries is all about. Every month, I pick up a small idea that’s been festering in my head or my notebook for months. I start building it out, and at the same time, every week, I document what’s going into the actual building — tech, design, product, marketing, growth — the works. Here’s what it’s supposed to look like, for a typical month with 4 weeks:
--> Week 1 — Define what the product’s supposed to do, user personas, figure out basic wireframes and mockups.--> Week 2 — Talk about the product’s gory tech. Backend, frontend, infrastructure.--> Week 3 — Figure out how the product launch goes.--> Week 4 — Talk about retention and engagement, analyze the whole shebang.
Hmm. Ambitious. A “mini-product” a month, with documentation on how it came about. The best part, is that all the code, design assets, everything will be open source on Github. You could take the code apart, cringe at my rather messy coding skills, wonder why I named a variable “asimov”, and of course, take it for a spin yourself. And, along with the posts I write up here, you could see exactly why I built something the way I did, and hopefully, do it better.
So, yeah. Guess that’s about it. If you like this, please do follow The Builder Diaries, so that I can keep bugging you with new posts and updates. And of course, if you like this, do hit the Recommend button below. Share some love!
